Chicago, IL – On January 24, over 60 people crowded the Latino Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to join a discussion with Juan González of the Great Cities Institute and David Ramirez of the Cuban Embassy around the current immigrant crisis and its root causes. The discussion was co-hosted by two campus groups: New Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at UIC and Mexican Students de Aztlán (MeSA) at UIC.

SDS is a national grassroots organization fighting for progressive change on campus, led by and for students. Members of SDS continually work to fight against U.S. wars and interventions, racist discrimination, police crimes, homophobic and transphobic attacks, attacks on women, attacks on reproductive rights and more through mobilizing protests and campaigns. MeSA is a Chicano, Latino, community-based organization that was established in 1993. MeSA emerged primarily to address pressing problems and issues affecting the Mexican, Chicano and the Latino communities. Young student activists and representatives from six other organizations also got the opportunity to chime in and speak at this extremely insightful gathering.

The importance of a conversation around the current immigrant crisis was made clear to members of SDS and MeSA after tens of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants began pouring into Chicago after being bused out of states like Texas and Florida by racist right-wing Republican governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis. These new arrivals are living in poor conditions inside and outside police districts, local parks, empty lots, and sometimes on street corners and sidewalks. Meanwhile, both major political parties are set to host their national conventions in the summer of 2024 – with the Democratic National Convention taking place in Chicago.

In October 2023, the veteran activist and renowned journalist Juan González published his report titled How U.S. Policy Toward Latin America Has Fueled Historic Numbers of Asylum Seekers. It was then that SDS and MeSA decided to team up with the Chicago Cuba Coalition to organize this educational event. Student activists and representatives from the endorsing organizations were asked to speak about the effects U.S. foreign policy has had on immigration from their respective homelands, as well as what that means for our movement today.

First to speak was Louise Macaraniag from Anakbayan at UIC, a youth activist organization fighting for the liberation of the Philippines through the national democratic movement. Macaraniag drew connections between the newly arrived immigrants from Venezuela to those coming from Mexico, Syria and the Philippines, reminding the crowd that this immigration “is a symptom of U.S. imperialism.” After elaborating on the economic ties between the governments of the Philippines and the U.S., they shared the story of their own family’s forced migration and the trauma that ensued. Macaraniag urged those in attendance to “stand in solidarity with all colonized people across the world to fight against U.S. imperialism.”

Next was the vice-president of the Union of Puerto Rican Students at UIC, Patricia Sepulveda. She began her speech by commending the discussion’s attendees for refusing to stay silent in such turbulent times. Sepulveda shocked the room as she quoted what Puerto Rico’s first civilian governor, Charles Herbert Allen stated in 1901, “Puerto Rico is a beautiful island with its natural resources undeveloped, and its population unfitted to assume the management of their own affairs. With American capital and American energies, the labor of the natives can be utilized to the benefit of all parties.” However, Sepulveda pointed out that what followed was exploitation and destruction of the island in the name of profits, much to the benefit of the U.S. and to the detriment of Puerto Ricans.

Sepulveda concluded that there is an immigrant crisis only because the U.S. has “created a system that leaves people all over Latin America in shambles, and with no choice but to come here, just to be treated like second-class citizens.”

Mahdi Muhamad spoke immediately after on behalf of the Students for Justice in Palestine at UIC, a powerful student organization that promotes justice, human rights and liberation for the Palestinian people. His passionate speech further exposed the heinous crimes that the U.S. government continues to facilitate in Gaza and all of occupied Palestine by sending billions of dollars in “aid” to the genocidal state of Israe. Muhamad closed his remarks with chants of “Free Palestine” that participants proudly echoed.

A co-founder of the newly formed Latine Student Coalition at UIC, Jay Campos, spoke about the brutal exploitation of Latin America by U.S. multinational corporations in the 20th century and the crippling consequences of the coups that they backed against several democratically-elected governments in the region. He also identified the annexation of northern Mexico by the U.S. in 1848 as a “critical point in history” and oppression.

Then, Sol Márquez joined the discussion online to represent Legalization For All (L4A), a large network of organizations and individuals fighting for immigrant rights and legalization for all 12 million undocumented people across the country. Márquez shared what she and others in L4A witnessed during their delegation to the U.S./San Diego border in April 2023, “Policies like NAFTA and embargos like the ones placed on Cuba and Venezuela led to immigration waves from these progressive nations.”

Márquez continued, “We have witnessed protective asylum status for Ukrainian immigrants, and the U.S. fondly referring to them as refugees – but the same gestures are never afforded to immigrants like my Mexican parents or Central American ones.”

The co-hosting student organizations, MeSA and SDS, made their final remarks before segueing to Juan González and David Ramirez. The president of MeSA at UIC, Lucy Arias, called attention to the historic hypocrisy of the U.S. government for their use of Mexican labor via the “Bracero” program implemented during World War II. She said, “Policies have been passed in the United States to both impede and facilitate the flow of immigration, depending on what is most convenient and needed by the United States. We are exposed to exploitation, maltreatment, threats, extortion and more, all because we looked for a new opportunity. They wanted our Braceros, “our brazos” but not our persons and people.”

Sahian Sotelo, a student organizer, emphasized the importance of community and solidarity in their speech on behalf of SDS at UIC. “Recently,” they said, “right-wing reactionary politicians have been having their way as they watch generations of existing Latino communities in Chicago turn against the incoming Venezuelans. The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. In turning against each other, we oppress ourselves and our very own community, when the reality is we are all struggling- and struggling together at that. In the struggle, there should be solidarity. Solidarity to stand up to our true oppressor.” Sotelo left the crowd on a powerful note with the vintage SDS chant, “Dare to struggle, dare to win!”

After the student activists and organizers finished their remarks, keynote speakers Juan González and David Ramirez were set to talk. At this point in the program, they both acknowledged and informed the audience that the youth speakers had energized and fired them up. González, in particular, fondly recalled being a member of the original SDS during his time as a youth activist in the late 1960s. During the presentation of his report on the current immigrant crisis, González repeatedly drew attention to and identified U.S. economic warfare against three specific countries – Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba – as a driving force in the latest migration surge.

González also detailed why so many people are fleeing Venezuela; the endless Cuba embargo; the sanctions against Nicaragua; the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, and practical solutions.

Finally, David Ramirez joined the discussion virtually from Washington, DC to speak on his work at the Cuban Embassy, the historic relations between the governments of the U.S. and Cuba, and Cuba’s tourist economy. Ramirez explained that we need background and context to understand why over 400,000 Cubans have immigrated to the U.S. Southwest border in the last couple years – the vast majority then heading to Florida.

Julie Wolenski spoke on behalf of the Chicago Cuba Coalition and motivated the audience to see Cuba for themselves. She suggested to folks, “Join a May Day delegation or brigade and join the campaign to take Cuba off the SSOT list!”

Afterwards, the students, organizers and community members gathered and held banners to record a short video demanding the U.S. end its blockade against Cuba and lift the sanctions against Venezuela and Nicaragua. The Latino Cultural Center was soon infused with a militant mood as activists broke out in a spirit of solidarity. We chanted “Cuba si! Bloqueo no!” and “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” Juan González and David Ramirez reminded those of us in the room that day that things didn’t have to be this way. If we wanted the situation to change, we had to fight for it.

#ChicagoIL #ImmigrantRights #StudentMovement #SDS #MECHa #International #Venezuela #Nicaragua #LatinAmerica #Cuba #L4A

Despite Bukele’s declaration of victory, two days after the election almost all of the ballots cast for the Legislative Assembly still remained uncounted and a significant number of presidential ballots also remained uncounted. On election night, poll workers across the country started reporting in live videos on social media that the computer system for reporting results kept trying to double or triple the number of votes for Nayib Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas, as they tried to transmit the results. Then the system crashed entirely, grinding ballot counting to a halt.

After the vote counting was stopped late Sunday night, the ballots from the country’s capital San Salvador were then “lost”’ for over a day, leaving open the possibility that they had been tampered with before they were “found” the next day.

On February 5, the day after the election, the Popular Resistance and Rebellion Block (BRP), a block of left-wing and progressive organizations in El Salvador, released a statement saying that they condemn:

“… the unconstitutional reelection of Nayib Bukele, imposed with the complicity of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). As an expression of the organized Salvadoran popular movement, the Popular Resistance and Rebellion Block DOES NOT recognize the illegal election results or the de facto regime surging from this electoral farce. We denounce the fact that to guarantee this fraud in favor of the governing party, the regime also illegally modified the electoral system and violated many legal dispositions during the electoral campaign. We positively appreciate the courage of hundreds of thousands of people who voted for the opposition in a context of illegalities, political persecution and the continuing State of Exception, which suppresses constitutional guarantees and which the government utilizes as a mechanism of social containment. In this context of rupture with the constitutional order, of repression and regression in the political, social and economic order, we reiterate our call to build a broad front of left, democratic, and progressive forces to impede the consolidation of the dictatorial regime that seeks to perpetuate itself in power. We call on the people to get organized and deepen the struggle against the Bukele clan’s dictatorship, which sustains itself with illegalities and which has the backing of the oligarchy and imperialism.”

In a press conference after the election, a spokesperson for the group of accredited international election observers from the Center for Interchange and Solidarity, which has observed every Salvadoran election since the 1992 Peace Accords, said, “We suspect that there was an attempt to modify the results by the system that completely failed in the final counting. There wasn’t a ‘Plan B’ and they haven’t given any explanation for why the internet went out, for why the Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s electoral reporting system failed, why the printers stopped working. Some reported that the boxes containing the technology arrived without being properly sealed. This has never happened before. So we don’t know if something happened with bad intentions, but the Attorney General must investigate. There were many irregularities and these were the most chaotic elections since 1994.”

Despite these flagrant and widely-reported problems observed by international election monitors, on the day after the election U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken hastily recognized Bukele as the winner, saying, that the U.S. “looks forward to working with President-elect Bukele and Vice President-elect Felix Ulloa following their inauguration in June.”

Prominent right-wing political figures in the U.S. also quickly recognized Bukele as the election winner, including Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Bukele is popular with Republicans in the U.S., including Donald Trump. On the other hand, U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar and several of the more progressive members of Congress sent a public letter to the Biden administration the week before the Salvadoran election raising alarms over President Bukele's state of emergency, unlawful arrests and detention, harassment of political opponents, restrictions on press freedoms, and other actions.

Bukele’s self-declared victory in this election, for which he was ineligible to run, which took place under a militarized State of Exception, brings to an end El Salvador’s period of political opening that began in 1992 with the end of the Salvadoran Civil War. The Peace Accords signed that year put in place reforms forced by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) during its period as a left-wing guerrilla movement, which allowed the left to openly participate in elections for the first time in the country’s history. The left in El Salvador was outlawed and excluded from elections through the 1980s; the elections that the left tried to participate in under the umbrella of broad coalitions in the 1970s were stolen from them through fraud and brutal repression, leading to the rise of the armed left-wing revolutionary movement of the 1980s.

The Salvadoran constitution’s prohibition against a president serving two consecutive terms was put in place because of repeated experiences of military dictatorship in the 20th century, to prevent the same thing from recurring. But after winning the presidency in 2019, President Bukele illegally sacked and replaced the country’s Supreme Court justices with his own supporters, who then “reinterpreted” the constitution to allow him to run again.

Throughout this year’s electoral campaign Bukele changed the rules and tilted the playing field to his party’s advantage while threatening and repressing opposition parties to assure he and his Nuevas Ideas party would win. Bukele’s maneuvers included reducing the number of seats in the Legislative Assembly and redrawing the map of the country, and combining cities where opposition parties like the left-wing FMLN have support with areas where he had more support in order to reduce opposition parties’ representation.

Bukele and his supporters’ had an explicit goal in this year’s election of forcing the left wing FMLN’s disappearance as a recognized political party, by keeping their vote totals under the limit that would allow them to continue as a legal electoral party. While the results are still unclear, the partial and provisional results that were reported before the system crashed seem to indicate that Bukele failed in his attempt to erase the FMLN out of existence. In the numbers released so far, the FMLN has the second highest vote totals, higher than all other opposition parties.

This election took place under restricted democratic rights, with the militarized State of Exception that has dragged on for two years now with no end in sight. The mass arrests of more than 76,000 people under the State of Exception has rocketed El Salvador to have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

While the mass arrests are said to be aimed at combating street gangs, the government itself has admitted that at least 10% of the people they’ve arrested and held without charges are innocent, with the actual number likely higher.

While Bukele’s targeting of violent street gangs has been popular, he has also used the “war on gangs” and the State of Exception as cover to attack his political enemies, principally the left-wing FMLN party. Both of the former presidents from the FMLN, Salvador Sanchez Ceren and Mauricio Funes, have been forced to flee the country to avoid political persecution, receiving political asylum from neighboring Nicaragua’s progressive government. Several other FMLN leaders have been jailed and dragged through trumped-up trials accusing them of corruption, and Bukele frequently accuses the FMLN of being terrorists.

Bukele’s government has also attacked progressive activists like the environmental movement leaders in the town of Santa Marta who helped win a ban on exploitative foreign mining operations in El Salvador, jailing five key leaders for over a year on bogus charges before being forced to release them after widespread international protests.

Bukele’s government also tried to jail Ruben Zamora on bogus charges. Zamora is an important figure in modern Salvadoran history, as a founder of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) in 1980 who survived capture and torture, and whose brother was assassinated by the U.S.-backed military during the Salvadoran Civil War. Zamora was also the FMLN’s presidential candidate in the first election after the civil war in 1994, an ambassador to the U.S. and the UN under FMLN presidents. In recent years he has been an outspoken critic of President Bukele, reminding Salvadorans that their constitution allows insurrection against an illegitimate government. International outcry forced the government to rescind their order of capture against Zamora.

While Bukele currently has a base of support in El Salvador – and even more so among Salvadorans living abroad, due to his highly-orchestrated self-promoting propaganda campaign and the perception that he has ended violence in the country – he seemingly wasn’t content to gamble that his personal popularity would transfer to his party’s candidates for the Legislative Assembly enough to keep their supermajority – a supermajority that allows him to push through whatever policies he wants without debate.

Bukele’s use of extralegal means to attack the left and to tighten his grip on power has politically catapulted El Salvador back 50 years, to the time when right-wing leaders aligned with the military and with U.S. imperialism ruled through open repression and tried to silence any left-wing or popular movement.

#International #LatinAmerica #CentralAmerica #ElSalvador #FMLN #Elections #Imperialism #RightWing #Feature

Miami, FL – On December 1, immigrant groups representing several different countries in the Caribbean and South America rallied together at the Torch of Friendship to show unity and strength against U.S imperialism and far-right political violence in Latin America. Various groups of immigrant activists united in what they said was just the beginning of a new movement in South Florida to bring together the various struggles in Latin America against neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism.

Activists representing Chile, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Colombia and Brazil spoke out against neoliberal policies, U.S militarism, and U.S.-backed right-wing governments in Latin America.

The activists sang protest songs that conveyed how the policies of the United States and the governments it supports in the region are leaving the indigenous and working people, Afro-Latinos and farmers, students and activists throughout the region in a state of destitution.

Speakers at the event denounced the violence being committed by the Chilean government against protesters; the racist, right-wing coup in Bolivia, and the ultra-right government in Brazil. They also condemned U.S. capitalism run amok in Puerto Rico through vicious austerity measures and the murderous violence against labor leaders and activists in Colombia.

The event finished in song as the protesters belted, “El pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido!”

#MiamiFL #Americas #PeoplesStruggles #LatinAmerica

Chicago, IL – Today, a military coup took place in Bolivia. The first act began on October 20 – the day that Evo Morales was re-elected president by a ten-point margin against his nearest opponent, starting with violent protests in the country's urban middle-class neighborhoods. The final act was carried out by the head of the Bolivian Armed Forces, Gen. Williams Kaliman, who went on national television today and demanded that Morales resign. This followed a day of police mutinies in key cities, and in totality it was clear that the elected government had lost the support of the armed apparatus of the state. Without arms to fall back on, and fearing the slaughter of their supporters, Morales, his vice president Álvaro García Linera, and the president of the Senate, Adriana Salvatierra resigned. Morales stated, ”I am resigning so that my comrades will not continue to be intimidated and threatened, so that [the reactionaries} will stop burning their homes and persecuting the humble people.”

From the beginning, it must be clear that the street violence that led to this moment was not about “the people vs. the government.” In Bolivia, where the people live under a constitution that was popularly written and democratically approved in 2009, the people are the government. For the first time since the Spanish invasion, the indigenous masses exercised political control over their own territory – Bolivia being the only country left in the Americas where the majority of the population is indigenous. In the entire history of this hemisphere, only two indigenous people have been elected president – Benito Juárez in México a hundred and fifty years ago, and Evo Morales in Bolivia.

Before Evo came to office, Bolivia was the sole governance of a handful of families, the oligarchy whose historic roots lie in the Spanish Conquest and whose only fount of current legitimacy comes from U.S. capital. It was not long ago that the country was an apartheid state, where the indigenous were denied the right to vote and own property. A national democratic revolution in 1952 tore down this order, but the oligarchy quickly regained power in the new democratic order. It was in the mass revolt against this consolidation of power that Che arrived to fight, and ultimately die, alongside his Bolivian comrades.

Evo came to office in 2005 as an indigenous trade unionist, at the helm of the Movement to Socialism (MAS), a political alliance of left-wing trade unions, peasant unions and indigenous organizations. In the thirteen years since first taking office, his government has led a transformation of Bolivia from an economic backwater – a country without any sovereignty, totally beholden to American imperialist thuggery – into a genuinely prosperous society. The mines and gas refineries that used to be the sole property of U.S. firms were nationalized, and their revenue directed to lifting the poor out of poverty. For as long as Bolivia has existed, it has not known a period of greater collective prosperity and genuine democracy.

From day one, Evo's government has been a government of the mass movements, with indigenous workers and farmers occupying the halls of power that were built on their ancestor's backs. None of this could be forgiven by the oligarchy, nor by the social classes that benefited from their patronage system. These were the forces that have resisted MAS' transformation of Bolivia, and these were the forces that took to the streets on October 20th.

So what are these demonstrations about, if not democracy? The protesters decry “electoral fraud” without offering any proof, although that does not matter at all for the shameless U.S. media outlets that serve as the faithful loudspeakers of any rich thug. But, do they turn their attention to the seats of government in the capital, occupying Congress and demanding a new election? No. Instead, they set fire to union houses. They drag the elected mayors of cities and towns, only those that belong to MAS, from their homes and beat them, along with their family members. They drag one, a proud indigenous woman, into the middle of a crowd and forcibly cut off her hair. They set fire to the house of Evo's own sister. This was terrorism, on an organized scale and with the open support of the far-right opposition parties and the U.S. media.

What will now happen to the incredible society their movement has built is unclear. Reports are coming in that at least twenty people from Evo's government have sought asylum in Mexico's embassy in the capital. The wiphala, the flag that represents the diversity of Bolivia's indigenous people, has been taken down from government buildings in the capital. Evo, for his part, has declared that he will not leave. He and his vice president have gone to the countryside, to their base, in order to lead the grim struggle going forward.

The coup faces one of the most organized mass movements on the continent, one whose resilience and revolutionary courage goes back centuries, from the resistance to the Spanish Conquest in the 1500s to the armed miner uprisings of only a few decades ago. The Bolivian people possess in their history and in their lived experience a great bravery. Now they must use it to defend the better society they have built.

This week is a sober reminder that history does not move along a straight line. An incredible victory in one corner can be, and often is, accompanied by a terrible defeat in another. Such is the nature of war. And what we are witnessing in our continent, from Haiti to Chile, is a war. A contradiction, like any tension, can only last so long before it breaks. The Americas have broken open, and all energy must be coalesced into common struggle to cast the bourgeoisie of our countries – whose descendants consciously committed genocide and forced millions into slavery so that they could live in decadence – into the dustbin. “History is ours,” said Salvador Allende as airplanes of the U.S. backed military dropped bombs around him and his comrades, “and the people make history.” In Bolivia, we suffered a defeat today. Tomorrow, let us ensure a victory there and in every corner of our America.

#Bolivia #Opinion #Americas #PeoplesStruggles #Coup #OpEd #LatinAmerica #SouthAmerica #EvoMorales